


a burden shared is a burden halved

by strangehighs



Series: the weight of all these years [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Falling In Love, Getting Together, Historical Inaccuracy, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pre-Canon, Probably but I tried, Very light smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:14:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25498921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangehighs/pseuds/strangehighs
Summary: (And a joy shared is a joy doubled.)Sometimes Yusuf wondered how much a life could change in so little time. Things he’d taken for absolute truths, unquestionable certainties, crumbled in a moment. In a sword’s blow.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: the weight of all these years [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1940923
Comments: 53
Kudos: 727





	1. Chapter 1

Sometimes Yusuf wondered how much a life could change in so little time. Things he’d taken for absolute truths, unquestionable certainties, crumbled in a moment. In a sword’s blow.

Death was the first of them to go, the moment he woke up for the first time after barely noticing the slash cutting through his front until he felt his entrails tumbling out. It was a fairly safe assumption to have in such a moment, in his humble opinion, the one of certain death, so he thought it was excusable that he used his last breaths to hack at his attacker with his own weapon. His aim was sure, more blood was spilt, and the last thing he saw before losing consciousness were wide eyes staring back at him.

He woke up among the corpses, gasping and shaking like a newborn foal, after what appeared to be hours, with only a gaping hole in his clothing and bloodstains as proof of his nowhere to be found mortal wound. Stumbling more than walking, he made his way back to his people, but that was just the beginning of his confusion.

The dreams started, more vivid than his own memories. Two women riding together across green pastures, sharing the warmth of a blanket at night, laughing, fighting, _dying_. Neither of them stayed dead, just like he didn’t, and he startled awake. He dreamt of light eyes, fair hair; his killer, mouthing words in prayer feverishly, his confusion palpable even through the dream. Yusuf stamped the feeling of kinship that overcame him at this, for he found himself in the same position as the other man, if he was indeed alive too.

Confirmation came soon, when he spotted his killer again in the battlefield. The man’s face twisted in rage, but this time Yusuf landed the first blow, cutting through his armor like had been done to him the day before. He did not notice the other grazes that had pierced through him, healed before the heat of the battle allowed him to feel them. He felt the man’s knife, for he’d been unburdened of his sword this time, stuck to the hilt just above his hip; he even felt it scrap at the bone inside. He felt it twisting, and he turned his gaze down; a mouth stretched in a snarl, blood covered teeth, just before the eyes clouded and the man was no more. Yusuf slumped right beside him, and it all faded again.

They repeated that dance many other times, coming back quicker and quicker each one of them, until the city fell. The tiredness he’d been feeling came to a head at the carnage, and for the first time he asked himself why wasn’t he allowed at least the reprieve of a final death. It would’ve been less painful than watching so many innocents slaughtered for no good reason, while he was unable to help, to stop it. He couldn’t even stop that one man.

The last time he woke up, his mind was already made up. There was nothing else tethering him to this land anymore, but he still had this strange curse (blessing?) placed upon him. The man in his dreams was real, and that meant the two women probably were too. Maybe they knew what it was, why it happened. It was as good a purpose than any other.

Casting his gaze around, he found the man kneeling among the corpses, quivering, muttering to himself. Yusuf thought it strange that he wasn’t with his people, revelling in their bloody conquest, but he did his best to pay him no mind. He stood, willing his tired body to move, to _leave_ , only to be froze in place by a whimper. Tried as he might, he couldn’t stop himself from looking back, seeing the man touching the face of a child, dead in her mother’s arms, softly as if it were made of the finest glass, _weeping_. He’d never felt such all consuming rage inside himself before or since, as he felt at such sight. Before he noticed, he had a knife in one hand, a clump of dirty hair in the other; the all-consuming grief in those eyes faded with a flick of his wrist, a river of blood.

He walked away, not reaching very far before he heard the telltale gasp of the man awakening again, but he did not turn. He walked, he gathered what he could, avoiding the invaders, managing to snag a bucking mare, and he left. He rode out into the wild, avoiding the roads and other people, avoiding the death that followed the franks.

To his permanent vexation, the man followed him. On foot, looking more dead than alive, he followed him day in, day out. More than once he stumbled and fell, death holding him in its grasp for a few moments before he sputtered awake again, weaker and weaker. In his mind, in the dead of night when he stayed just shy of the edge of his campfire's light, Yusuf couldn't help but compare him to a stray mongrel—begging and wary, always expecting a stone thrown his way but hoping for something else—and he had to remind himself of the horrors his people unleashed at the city to not feel pity, even compassion. He was a stubborn one, his killer.

He traveled east, outskirting Amman. He’d seen travelling merchants, hailing from far beyond Persia, that looked like one of the women he dreamt of, so it felt like a fair bet.

(Quynh. That was the name he heard the tallest of the two call the other, on a dream he had on his third day of travel, said with such devotion he felt a tightness in his chest.)

(A soft gasp from the shadows indicated his killer woke up at the same time he did, plagued by the same dreams.)

Five days away from Amman, he heard the man stumble once, twice, and then fall. Yusuf waited for the customary cough, the rasping inhale indicating his revival, and the subsequent halting steps as he picked himself up, but this time nothing came. Halting his horse, he waited, heart beating loudly in his ears, until long moments passed, and still nothing. Closing his eyes, he told himself he didn’t care. He didn’t. Maybe they were only meant to survive each other, and not the world at large. Maybe—

A rattling wheeze. A whimper.

And nothing else. Yusuf gave in and turned in his saddle, watching the shape laying on the ground, immobile except for a few twitches of his fingers. For a split second he imagined himself leaving him there, to die and wake in the middle of the desert for however long. It only lasted a second. His mother always said he had a soft heart.

He slung the man over his horse and walked beside it, cursing his own idiocy. His killer had divested himself of his armor over the days, and the remaining clothing did nothing to hide the fact that he hadn’t eaten or drunk in days; with no spare fabric, his head had gone uncovered for the duration of their trek, the skin red and peeling all over his face, the simple fact that he didn’t have any real sores a testament to the extent of their bodies’ endurance. He didn’t wake until Yusuf pushed a waterskin against his mouth when he stopped to rest, his eyes unfocused and bloodshot until he recognized the thing currently pressed against his face. The first sip came with a small whimper, and Yusuf had to take it away from him least he drunk too much at once and made himself sick.

It took another three days of this, of silent travel and minimal contact, before Yusuf gave in to his curiosity. He tried with his own arabic, receiving only a blank stare as answer. The man, in turn, took it as an invitation and started chattering at whatever languages he could think of. Yusuf took pity on him when he garbled a few words in greek, stumbling though they were, and answered in sort. He knew a little of the bastardized latin the man favored, having heard it enough around port cities as a merchant’s son, but he’d be damned if he were to give him this advantage, so greek it was.

The smile he received when he finally introduced himself and was understood was blinding and genuine, the man perking up as a plant left dry for too long after a rain.

“I’m Nicolò,” he answered, nothing in his demeanor indicating they’d killed each other many times just a little over a week ago.

He had no way of knowing back then, and wouldn’t know for a few more years, that that simple introduction would be the second blow against whatever certainties he had. That it would be the single most important event in his life, more even than his first death. But again, he’d expected death.

He’d never expected Nicolò.

* * *

They’d been traveling together for twelve years already, sharing life and death. Never again at each other’s hands, and never if they could avoid it, but in their way of life it became occasonally unavoidable. They came back each time.

In these years they noticed time had no more hold on them than death by a blade, their faces unchanged as if sculpted in marble. It served to purge the urgency out of their plans, slowly changing their focus from finding Quynh and Andromache (Nicolò gasped awake one night, a month into their first stay in Baghdad, with her name on his lips. A powerful name.) to a more sedate wandering. They still looked for them, wherever they went, but they’d found their own path together.

He got to know Nicolò, his true face, a little more each day. The despairing, raging creature from Jerusalem steadily gave way to a man of gentle disposition, slow to anger and steadfast as an old tree, loyal to a fault. He learned about the hellish year he spent on the edge of Antioch, fresh out of his holy life, thrust into violence and hunger, all in the name of heavenly salvation.

(“My mother commended me to the Church when I was a baby,” he said once in their second year, on a rest stop on their way to Varanasi, in a still truncated arabic. He’d forgiven Yusuf for hiding his knowledge of latin quickly enough, saying it at least made him learn another language. “She said I was born weak, and no one thought I’d survive my first year, but God answered her prayers. I was sent to a monastery at fifteen, left to join the pilgrimage.”

“Were you not given a choice in this?”

“I’m the fifth son,” he shrugged, “I would’ve ended up there one way or another.”)

His skills with a sword had been good enough, better now after years of practice, but he really shined with a bow in his hands. During their wanderings, they ended up sleeping closer together each night, out of necessity in the beginning, for Yusuf had never been a light sleeper, while Nicolò could wake at the drop of a pin and ready to fight.

(“We had to sleep in our day clothes, and wake at the first toll of the bell,” he said, the night after they dealt with their first road ambush. Yusuf had fallen to a knife to the throat before he even noticed what was happening, and Nicolò, at the other side of the fire, had been unable to reach him in time. “If we didn’t, the priest in charge would wake us by whipping your feet with a branch.”

“Your people are very strange.”)

With time, it became habit, even in the safety of closed rooms. It was uncomfortable at first, admitting that he not only enjoyed Nicolò’s company, but rather that he craved it. The discomfort of not having him close by was bigger, like missing a part of himself, so the struggle didn't last long.

He took solace in knowing he wasn’t alone in this, that the other craved his company just as much.

(“We _can_ pay for two rooms this time around, you know,” said Yusuf, inwardly satisfied with himself as they settled to sleep.

“No point in wasting money,” came the answer at his side, already muffled and rough with sleep.)

So they travelled, and they learned, and more importantly, they helped whenever possible, because Yusuf had never truly been able to leave someone in need if he could do something. To his happy surprise, Nicolò was the same.

They'd been escorting a merchant caravan from Kabul to Anxi, following the course of the Tien Shan mountains. Their contractor claimed their latest caravans had been waylaid by bandits leds by demons, furious and unbeatable, leaving them with barely enough people to lead it back. Nicolò joked it seemed the right job for them to get enough coin to fund a stay in China, otherworldly and dangerous, and so they set off.

The first leg of the journey had been peaceful enough, and Yusuf revelled in the new sights. At rest stops he could almost always found scribbling an impression or another, or sketching in a very fine booklet Nicolò had given him before the beginning of the journey, much to the other guards’ amusement. He didn’t mind the teasing, but he felt increasingly concerned at the fact that, no matter the beauty surrounding him, the most depicted theme in his drawings was undoubtedly Nicolò. Or Nico, as he’d taken to call him lately.

He did not entirely think any advance of his would be poorly received, not with the way they’d been living lately, out of each other’s pockets. Not when he woke just a few days ago with his arm slung over Nico’s middle and the only complaint he received was for taking the warmth with him when he got up.

No, he didn’t think that, but still. He worried. And he waited, telling himself that they had time.

Things were progressing so easily he started to think they wouldn’t get into any trouble for once, but obviously that’s when it all went wrong. The caravan had stopped, to both allow them a longer rest and to hunt. They had their guard down.

The attack came quickly, and Joe barely had time to engage with one of them when he felt a deep piercing pain searing through his left eye, into his skull. He heard Nico shouting his name before blacking out, and he only hoped to come back fast.

* * *

The buzzing of conversation reached his ears before he managed to control his body enough to move, followed by the feeling on his skin. He felt his head pillowed on something, soft fingers carding gently through his hair.

(“This is entirely impractical.”

Apparently their healing didn’t allow calluses to form, treating them like any other wound. Nicolò disliked the idea of hurting his fingers over and over on the bowstring without the protection.

Yusuf liked that no matter how much they fought, his own hands would still feel like an artist’s, allowing himself a little vanity. He just bought Nico a nice pair of gloves.)

Nico’s fingers in his hair, probably his lap under his head. There were definitely worse ways to wake up after death.

“...rry for hurting your beloved,” he heard a voice say, “We didn’t recognize you at first.”

The fingers in his hair stuttered, and Yusuf waited for what Nico would answer. It was a confusing situation to wake up to, but this was certainly more important. If whoever killed him truly meant them harm they wouldn’t be here peacefully apologizing for it.

“He’ll forgive you,” answered Nico, resuming his petting, “He’s forgiven me and I’ve done it much more than once.”

Yusuf barely heard what followed, another voice commenting on the uniqueness of their situation, under the beating of his own heart, at Nicolò not contradicting the other person. He must’ve squirmed in some way, in his excitement, because the fingers stopped again.

“Excuse me one moment,” said Nico, and for the first time he noticed they all had been speaking in latin. Not the genoese dialect of Nico’s childhood, but a more formal, archaic version. “Yusuf, I know you’re awake. It would be nice of you to join the conversation,” he said, changing to the arabic they used the most.

He blinked open his eyes, the left still heavy and clouded, being greeted by the face he came to love more than his own life, a little flushed but amused, a small smile playing around his lips. He smiled back, before turning to their company, already knowing what to expect. Andromache and Quynh sat on the grass in front of them, deceptively serene if you didn’t look closely at the astounding amount of weapons strapped to their bodies. Quynh smiled at him when he noticed the bow at her side, shorter than Nico’s, and he smiled back at her. No harm done.

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you,” he said back in latin, sitting up just enough he could recline against Nico’s front, whose hands came up to his shoulders immediately. “Even if by chance. We meant to find you sooner, but luck wasn’t on our side.”

“Twelve years is pretty soon,” said Quynh, glancing at her companion, “It took Andromache more than twelve times that to find me.”

It took _him_ less than a moment to understand why this woman, who’d never seen him before except for dreams, took one look at them and realised how Nico felt for him; it only took him one look to also understand they felt the same for each other. Andromache’s smile was the only clue he needed. The realisation was followed by a stab in his chest, at the mere idea of going so long alone; he was certain he’d have gone mad already if he didn’t have Nicolò by his side.

“You travelled here escorting the caravan,” said Andromache, considering.

“And you’re the reason we’ve been hired,” said Nico, a pinch of amusement lacing his voice. “We were told they were attacked more than once by, hm, demon-led bandits. Our employer’s words, not mine.”

“Well, they did manage to hit Andromache once, just to watch her pull the knife out of her belly and move on as if nothing happened,” interjected Quynh, eliciting a bark of laughter out of the former, “So I can see why they’d have that impression, but our companions are not bandits.”

“Then why did you attack us?” asked Yusuf. “I can attest no one in the caravan has done them any grief to merit such a reaction.”

“The sheep,” said Andromache, and nothing else.

“Excuse me?”

“Your caravan only started to use this pass recently,” explained Quynh after throwing an exasperated look at her companion. “There’s a tribe, pastors and hunters, who use plains nearby as their summer settlements, for there is plenty of food for their sheep. Only the caravan comes through at roughly the same time as them, and your passing scares the animals away. It makes the leopards target their stock, and even their children if they’re feeling bold. We wanted to scare them away from this route,” she finished with a shrug.

“If that’s the only issue, why not talk to them?” said Nico, and Yusuf had to agree. It seemed much simpler than mounting an attack.

“They do not understand each other’s languages,” answered Andromache wryly, “And we do not think the travelling merchants would look kindly at two strange looking women armed to their teeth.”

“They probably wouldn’t,” said Yusuf, sitting up straighter, suppressing a shiver when Nicolò’s hand moved from his shoulder to his waist. “But we can help with that.”

* * *

For once, they managed to solve things without any more bloodshed, and Yusuf felt really damn pleased with himself. There had been a few hiccups, nominally he and Nico marching back to their camp accompanied by the very demons they’d been hired against. It took them awhile to get the tempers back in control, specially because Quynh could barely restrain herself from pulling out her daggers whenever one of the merchants started to run his mouth. With a group effort—with more than a few muttered curses from Nico’s part—but they managed to arrange a meeting between them and a few of the tribe’s men.

A week later they resumed their travel, with an understanding in place: they take pass further south on future travels, since it didn’t really increase their journey in more than a day, and receive supplies from the tribe in exchange for a few goods. Andromache and Quynh accompanied them to China, for they had no more reason to stay now a solution had been found, and they could use the time to get to know each other.

There was only one remaining issue, niggling at Yusuf's mind at every waking moment (and a few sleeping ones too.)

After that first talk when Quynh assumed they were in love, Nico moved on as if nothing had changed. They talked, and they laughed, and they slept, always together, or at least as close as possible, but nothing more than that. Well, maybe his touches were lingering a little longer, a little more frequently. Yusuf couldn’t tell if this was his own mind playing tricks, or wishful thinking. He knew the road wasn’t the best place to discuss this though, so he went back to his waiting.

The caravan was delivered, and their ways parted. An inn was found, a little on the expensive end, but they felt deserving of it this once. Andromache and Quynh retired to their own room, the former gracing him with a playful wink and the later with a knowing smile. Yusuf felt like a green youth near them, their friendship rapidly settling something in him he didn't even know he was missing. Sure, he’d had Nico, and he was forever grateful for it, but sometimes… sometimes it took a village.

“Nico.”

“Hm?”

He took a moment to admire the man sprawled beside him, scrubbed clean from head to toe for the first time in months. _Beautiful_ was all his mind could come up with at the moment, as tired as he was. His face was probably something disgustingly besotted right now, and he was grateful Nico looked halfway asleep already.

“Beloved?”

Nicolò snapped his eyes open, turning to him so fast he could almost hear his neck cracking. When he noticed the smirk playing along his face, he sagged against the bed, and Yusuf laughed.

“I wasn’t sure you’d heard it,” Nico answered, staring up at the ceiling. “But yes. I just didn’t think it was so obvious.”

“I think they just speak from experience,” he said. Shifting on his side, Yusuf hesitantly laid a hand along Nico’s breastbone, over the place he’d thrust his own blade into the first time they saw each other. When his life changed. The warm skin under his palm was soft, unblemished. “It wasn’t very obvious for me.”

Nico brought his hand up, fingers tracing his knuckles before lacing them together. They fit like two pieces of a puzzle.

He felt the movement more than he saw. Nicolò shuffled closer, turning his head to face him. Warm breath on his face, the scrap of a beard against his own. Lips, a kiss, stretching on for little more than a few heartbeats. Or it was an eternity. Yusuf couldn’t say.

“Was this obvious enough?”

He sounded playful, happy, and so very close. Yusuf smiled, ducking in for another kiss. He was right in thinking he had never expected Nicolò. He was all the more happy to have him though, deaths and all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nicolò wasn’t afraid to say he had never given his future much thought. It seemed a waste of his time, fighting against destiny.

Nicolò wasn’t afraid to say he had never given his future much thought. Since childhood he listened to his mother talking about the day he would join the Church with visible eagerness, elated at being able to fulfill her promise to God. When asked if he felt proud at being so blessed, chosen from birth to serve His earthly kingdom, Nicolò simply smiled and said "Of course, mother," and tried not to dwell on it. It seemed a waste of his time, fighting against destiny.

When the call to join the pilgrimage came, it seemed just as unavoidable as anything else in his life so far. His family hadn't been the richest, but neither had it been the poorest; he had been taught how to ride, to use a sword, and to fire a bow, which meant he was already more well prepared for the fight than most of his companions, even if his knowledge was as dusty and unused as the tomes and scrolls they kept. He thought of his mother, dead two years prior, and her usual question; he smiled, and accepted the sword.

They lost men to the sea, to the march from St Symeon to Antioch, and many more by the city’s walls. Others they lost to hunger and disease, and still the preachers ordered them to fast. It wasn’t a very difficult thing to enforce when they simply did not have enough food. Nicolò, for his part, started to lose his faith. He found himself competent in battle, and thus he let himself get lost in it too. So many parts of himself lost, what was one more?

At long last they took the city but it didn’t sate the hunger, for power and more victories, and hungry they set off for Jerusalem. They heard of christians being expelled from the city, their leaders using it to justify the barbarity of their foes. Nicolò prayed for a short siege, even if the words felt hollow in his mouth. He was numb, every day an ache growing inside him, and he couldn’t name it. He craved something, missed it without even know what it was, and no empty prayer could end it. He hoped—vainly, he’d realise later—that the conquest would give him answers he’d only started to ask himself, that were already tearing him apart.

The blade in his chest still came as a surprise, even after all the hunger and near misses from the last months. His last thought was to admire the fierceness of his adversary, to strike him so surely while half dead himself.

Waking up was a frightening affair overall, but to his shame, his first thought was disappointment, specially when he turned his face and saw the man who struck him laying in in a pool of his own blood. Desperation only set later, when he was back in the barracks examining his own perfectly undamaged skin under the torn armor; his upbringing made him fall down on his knees, asking for… forgiveness, guidance, he couldn’t say. Whenever he managed to fall asleep, despite the hunger and the confusion, he saw the man’s face, black eyes staring up at nothing, devoid of all light. There were other faces, but in those early days the only one who stuck out was that of his killer.

Finding him again in the battlefield made Nicolò sway and almost fall to his knees, before his teachings and the words of his commanders took hold of him again and he fought, mad with a rage he couldn’t explain. The disruption of his thoughtless life, of the mindless following; the fact that his blessing (curse?) was shared only with one of the men he’d been told again and again to hate. He didn’t know.

He was so tired.

The massacre hit him like nothing else before. He’d always been berated for his insufficient piety, for not sounding devout enough during his prayers, during his pilgrimage, but this? This was not piety. Children dead in their mother’s arms was not piety, or holiness, or whatever it was they were trying to make them think. Even Nicolò’s empty faith knew that.

He welcomed the blade to his throat, for it felt much more deserved than anything His kingdom on earth could offer.

Following the man was an unconscious decision, purely animal thinking. They were one of a kind, whatever was it they were. Nicolò couldn’t explain it, not while delirious in the desert, neither while feeling the touch of water down his throat, at the mercy of the saracen.

The strange yearning in his chest quieted when he learned his name. _Yusuf_ , it rumbled, content for the moment. _Yusuf_.

* * *

The following years were... strange. With time he came to know Yusuf more than he knew his own brothers, his own blood, and to feel for him more deeply than he ever thought possible, stranded in such a hopeless life as he was before them met. Sometimes it felt as if they were as different as the sun and the moon, and yet…

And yet.

He learned his language, stumbling through the syllables as a child in his longing for full communication. Yusuf was a good teacher, better than the priests and the tutors from his old life, and Nicolò even forgave him for not disclosing his knowledge of sabir earlier. He felt thankful simply for not being alone. He endured days of silence, telling himself he should feel grateful that was Yusuf’s only sign of displeasure, once his companion learned where he was from.

(“Who did you lose at Mahdia?” tried Nicolò, ready to apologise for something he had no control of if it meant he’d only talk to him again.

“Cousins,” answered Yusuf, face turned away. It was the first word he said to him in days, and it was still heavy, laden with decades of bad blood between their people. “My father lost ships. My brother had been at the city just two days before the attack took place.”

“Nicolò,” he called after a long moment, turning to him with sorrowful eyes, “I know it’s not your fault. It’s just…”

“Complicated,” he finished where Yusuf trailed off.)

He followed Yusuf to Baghdad, to Rhages, to Samarcand, and somewhere along the way he didn’t feel like he was just following anymore. It struck him one night as they settled to sleep, a few days travel south of Peshawar that they were travelling together as _equals_ , companions.

(He didn’t allow himself to think of them as friends. Not because he didn’t feel deeply enough for Yusuf, but because he didn’t feel worthy of his friendship yet.)

The roots of his feelings stretched back much further than he realised at the moment, or would realise anytime in the future. To their introduction. To the first time he watched Yusuf taken down by someone other than himself. It sent him into a rage unparalleled even by his madness under the walls of Jerusalem, that someone would dare hurt him, and he still remembers his companion’s face when he came back, to the sight of Nicolò bloodied and heaving, one arm barely attached to his body, and surrounded by corpses.

(They started sleeping beside each other afterwards. Within arm’s reach at first, a little closer together the next night. Before long they were sharing the same bedroll, but still Nicolò had to have a weapon in his hand. He couldn’t take chances.

He couldn’t help but think of his late mother, and where her promise had brought him, the first time he woke up with Yusuf’s breath against the nape of his neck. The guilt born of a lifetime of teachings was _drowned_ by the warmth against his back.)

His companion—in life and in death—turned out to be a man of arts, appreciator of beauty and good craftsmanship. He was a merchant’s son, travelled and educated, and as competent with his words as he was with his blade; once he disclosed his previous knowledge of lingua franca, he learned zeneise under Nicolò’s instruction much faster than he learned arab.

("What were you even doing as a soldier then?" asked Nicolò, in awe at the careful sketches, of people at the market, buildings—one of Nicolò himself, in profile by the window of their little rented room in Mosul, making his stomach flip—made with ink and a reed pen in loose paper sheets, hidden among Yusuf's clothes. "You're a poet, and a merchant, and now an artist. Why did you choose a blade when you had so many options?"

“My father wanted a son to join the effort to take Jerusalem,” Yusuf answered, a little flushed, trying to take the drawings back from Nicolò's hands. “It was logical that it would be me, given my older brother is married with children of his own and I'm not.”

“Why aren’t you?” insisted Nicolò, but gave the papers back. “Married, I mean.”

“I wanted to be there for my sisters until they were ready to follow their own lives. They were much younger than me, and our mother died giving birth to the youngest of the two. Maheen married six years ago, and Rida just a few months before I left. It was better this way, in the end.”

“Yes, maybe it was.”)

Looking for Andromache and Quynh had been their primary goal from the beginning, and it still was, twelve years down the line. They learned how to make money to keep themselves, by working as anything available—from farm hand to hunters to guards—but unavoidable situations kept pulling them away from their original journey. The first time it was taking a kidnapped girl back to her family, detouring them Kabul all the way up to Bukhara. Yusuf assured her they’d deliver her safely, only then remembering he didn’t travel alone. The look of surprise when he confirmed his intentions in his stilted arabic was followed by a warm hand on his shoulder, a tentative squeeze. It made Nicolò more elated than any praise he’d ever received at the seminary.

A flood on the Indus held them back for months, first by rescuing people from the waters, helping to rebuild houses and fields afterwards. There were thieves to be fought, fires to put down, and so they lost track of time.

Nicolò took notice of his growing feelings over the years. He would not be able to put it to words as beautifully as Yusuf could (If he felt the same. How Nicolò wishes he felt the same.), but it was there, at every breath he took. His kindness, his strength, his desire to help above all things; it filled Nicolò with a sort of love he had never felt before, and was each day surer he would never feel again.

He said nothing. Not after Yusuf introduced him as his friend to a family that took them in one night on the road, neither when he started calling him Nico. When he woke up one cold morning at the foot of the Tien Shan with his beloved’s arm cast over his waist, pressed against him from head to knees, still he said nothing.

Like everything else in his life, he decided to wait for the hand of destiny. It took him to Yusuf in the first place. They had time.

* * *

The deep yearning he had felt at the desolation of Antioch, beside Jerusalem, finally abated, sated, _fulfilled_ , when they found Andromache and Quynh. That their arrival also brought the impasse between him and Yusuf to an end was a considerable bonus he had not foreseen, but would be forever grateful, even if it came in the shape of an arrow.

The women were strange creatures, and Nico couldn’t tell if it was a product of their unfathomable age or if that was just how they were. Andromache had a dry, deadpan sense of humour that came out at the most unpredictable times, looking at the world as if nothing had the ability to faze her anymore. Quynh was quick witted, sharp of tongue; she took one look at them the next morning and smirked so knowingly he felt his face heating up to the roots of his hair. He felt like a child all over again, but for some reason it didn’t bother him. There was no malice in their teasing.

“So you're telling me that you simply decided to come to China, for a long stay,” asked Quynh, relentless. All because neither he nor Yusuf had been able to properly order food. “But you haven’t even an inkling of how to communicate here? None at all?”

“We would have managed,” said Yusuf, pushing more food in his his direction. He’d developed that habit very early on their journey together, and Nicolò couldn’t help but find it endearing. “Eventually.”

“We did fine in Bengal,” he added.

“They’ve had relations with the caliphates for centuries,” snorted Andromache, “So obviously you’d find people who knew both arabic and bengali. Here if you stray from the trade routes you will find dozens of different dialects, and no one to understand you. Poor planning.”

During the days, they talked, learning each other. Andromache was reluctant to say exactly how old she was, most of the time claiming she didn’t actually remember; when Quynh once mentioned they had both been alive when the Giza pyramids were built, Nicolò stopped asking. Yusuf paled when they mentioned Ibrahim and Solomon while listing people they claimed to have known, but they never knew the Prophet.

“We spent most of that century south of Sahara,” said Quynh, with a shrug of her shoulders.

They also found time to test their abilities beyond languages and history. Some days they would make the trek out of the city and spar, blades clashing in wide circles, or tight against their space, if they’d chosen knives. Quynh took a special interest in Nicolò, for his abilities with a bow; he had no means to compare himself to her, with so many centuries of experience, but she praised him still. He envied her ease at shooting from horseback, even while riding behind Andromache.

Despite all that novelty, sometimes Nicolò noticed a shadow hovering between the two women, an empty space. They did not mention it, nor did they give any indication besides a phrase here and again, waiting to be completed by someone who wasn’t there, and he knew they, somehow, had lost someone they loved.

It made him afraid at first, the possibility of their gift not being truly permanent. Now that he had them, all of them, he did not want to let go. Not of Yusuf, whom he could say he loved more than the sun itself, not Andromache and Quynh. They already felt more like a family than his own by blood ever did, than his brothers at the seminary ever could have been. He felt greedy for any time he could have with them.

In the end, he felt foolish for his thoughts. That they still could die simply meant they were human still, like any other. They lived their lives, they cherished the moments with their loved ones, sure that death could be waiting at any moment. It shouldn’t sour the happy memories; it should make each one unique, special.

He’d have the family destiny had given him, for however long it would allow him. And he would be thankful.

* * *

They were to leave come morning, after having heard of some sort of unrest further east that they could, hopefully, help with. It still felt unreal that, before even knowing each other, they’ve chosen to act much the same; they helped, because they could.

Nico awoke before Yusuf, when the sky had barely started to grey yet. He looked at his lover, half draped over him, and couldn’t help but smile; with his hair in disarray, face and body slack with sleep, he looked more beautiful than ever.

(“I wish I could draw you.”

“Hm?” was Yusuf’s only answer, breath caught in his throat, thoughts muddled in pleasure. He looked like one of the roman statues of gods and heroes he’d seen in the past, utterly perfect to Nicolò’s eyes.

He stopped his hand, kissing his lover’s jaw and neck while he caught his breath. “You look so beautiful I wish I could draw you,” he said against his skin, feeling Yusuf shiver. “I wish you could see yourself like I do.” He tightened his hand, moving it slowly, slowly.

“Nico, ah, please—”)

Extricating himself carefully as to not wake him, Nico went to their pack, already made, silently cheering when he found what he was looking for. He took the book to the window, examining the carefully stitches pages in the early light; he’d bought it a week prior to replace the one he'd used at the journey, its soft pages begging for Yusuf’s drawings to fill them the moment he saw it at the market.

He found, as expected, reproductions of the scenery, of animals and fruits and interesting things he’d seen, but most importantly, he found his family. Many drawings of Andromache, of Quynh, sometimes only a detail or another; he found himself, many times over. Sharpening his sword, or laughing at something or another; naked in their bed, asleep. This little proof of their lives, here in his hands, made him feel so full of emotion. Happy. It was hard to believe sometimes…

“Nico?”

“Yes, love?”

“What are you doing awake?” asked Yusuf, still half asleep reaching blindly among the bedding. “It’s still hours until we have to depart.”

He placed the book in the satchel, and laid back in the bed. The reaching hands immediately settled against him, comfortable. “Just thinking.”

“About?”

“How destiny must be true,” he answered with a sigh, already feeling the pull of sleep again, “And how kind it was to us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it folks! Have Nicolò being ridiculously in love with his man, for no good reason except he deserves it. Again, my history levels are, uh, Wikipedia. I tried, in good faith.
> 
> Comments are appreciated, loved, adored, every adjective you can think of!

**Author's Note:**

> This is the most self indulgent thing I've written, also the product of a few fevered days of much ADHD fuelled Wikipedia reading. I do not have any knowledge about history and geography beyond this, nor can I let myself get in even deeper, so this is what you get. I just wanted a bit of them killing each other, then pining for each other.
> 
> For The Old Guard related talks, hit me up at [this tumblr](https://strangehighs.tumblr.com/tagged/*gif), thank you!.


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